Aguilar Tone Hammer with Toby Pro 6

//Ugh sorry I hit the back button and it posted twice... If anybody knows how to delete one of them then please do so.

I have a Toby Pro 6 bass that I really enjoy the playability and low action of it. The electronics are crap as far as I can tell (MightMite passive pickups and a horrible active preamp that is worse than just wiring directly to the input jack). I'd love to add some more tone variations to my bass and don't want to buy a new bass any time soon.

I play through an Ampeg 4x10HLF and I just bought a Aguilar Tone Hammer 350 thinking this would help get a more modern sound, but this didn't help much. I'm still happy with the amp, but I know the weak spot it my bass's preamp and or pickups. I read on the forums a lot of success stories of people just installing a new preamp and loving their new sound. This got me wanting to buy the Aguilar OBP-3, but then I read this article: http://www.bestbassgear.com/ebass/gear/electronics/pedals/when-is-a-pedal-better-than-a-preamp.html
that basically said the OBP-3 is going to be the same difference as the preamp already in my Tone Hammer 350... I always play with both my soapbar pickups fully on so from my understanding I wouldn't be getting any impedance matching and buffering benefits, and all I would get is a output level boost. So that made me think that maybe I shouldn't get a preamp. I am a complete noob to this stuff so I could easily be missing something else.

My figuring was that since I have the Tone Hammer 350 already, then I'd be better off just getting some Bartolini pickups (maybe Bartolinis M56) and keeping my current crappy inbass preamp (that I always keep on neutral) just the way it is. Would just getting Bartolini pickups and no new preamp be a good idea?

Are the electronics in the tone hammer, and the basses control cavity big enough. That you could get someone to replace the stock electronics with the tone hammers? Then just replace pups with whatever passive pups you prefer.

Otherwise, replaceing the basses electronics and pups is best choice imo. You could do this with passive electronics and use the pedal same as you would bass preamp. Cept its on floor now and bending over to twist knobs is awkward while playing. Lol. Tone hammers nice pedal. Nice enough that converting bass to passive is an option imo. Otherwise basslines blacksout 2band preamp is great choice for very nice inexpensive onboard preamp;. Which gives you 2 center freq choices for trreble via dip switch on circuit board.